Betrayed Reith hits at 'lackey' Abbott

Phillip Coorey

PETER REITH has scolded Tony Abbott for being too timid to embrace industrial relations reforms, saying the Opposition Leader's ambivalence was a source of growing concern in the business community.

Mr Reith indicated he would start publicly advocating policy change in defiance of Mr Abbott, who has been trying to squash internal debate to avoid giving Labor an excuse to reignite its anti-Work Choices campaign.

Writing in today's Herald, Mr Reith, an industrial relations hardliner, calls on Mr Abbott to show the same courage as the Liberal premiers Barry O'Farrell and Ted Baillieu, who have implemented industrial relations changes.

''Luckily, these two premiers have not been deterred by a scare campaign and they will act in the public interest,'' he says.

''By addressing practical problems with specific reforms, these premiers are demonstrating an approach that Tony could emulate.''

Mr Reith's comments could rouse an increasingly restive Coalition backbench, members of which have grown frustrated by Mr Abbott's risk-averse approach, which prevents them speaking out.

Mr Reith reveals he did a deal with Mr Abbott to confine his industrial relations views to internal forums if he won the presidency.

He says Mr Abbott implicitly has given him permission to speak out because of the way he voted. ''It was his choice,'' Mr Reith says.

''I have no idea why he did it and I'm sad that it happened.''

Liberals say resistance to Mr Reith was motivated by opposition to his post-election review of the Liberal Party, which recommends structural reform to democratise party processes.

It is understood he describes the party's federal organisation as a ''fiefdom'' comprising the parliamentary leader, the federal secretary and the federal president.

As a minister in the first term of the Howard government, Mr Reith introduced the first wave of industrial relations reforms and took on the waterfront unions.

He left politics in 2001, four years before the introduction of Work Choices.

But in the lead-up to the presidential ballot on Saturday, Nick Minchin, who did the numbers for Mr Stockdale, said electing Mr Reith would pave the way for Labor to launch an anti-Work Choices campaign against Mr Abbott.

Mr Reith says Work Choices, which stripped the safety net from individual agreements, ''is obviously buried and no one wants it back''. But there is still an argument for more incremental change to Labor's Fair Work Act.

''If we jump in fright every time Nick Minchin says the ALP is salivating at the thought of the Liberals doing something necessary, then Australia's prospects are not looking good,'' he says.